Voting On A Phantom Budget

What have anti-income-tax legislators been doing for the past two or three months? Certainly not putting together a plausible alternative that lawmakers could vote on today with any confidence.

The budget anchored by a tax on wages was adopted in late August. At least by the time the anti-tax rally was held Oct. 5, and probably before, leaders of the repeal movement must have known that they could get enough support for a special session to consider repeal.

But did they set immediately to work on a substitute for the spending and tax package that they wanted to throw out?

It doesn't seem so. Not until virtually the eve of the special session, which began Nov. 18, did opponents of the income tax release sketches of their respective alternative plans. And those plans were wholly inadequate.

The conservative Democrats' idea for a transaction tax is so far out that it would be lucky to be relegated to a study. The Republicans' plan, which highlights an increased and expanded sales tax and higher taxes on unearned income, listed vague spending cuts that couldn't be evaluated. Neither proposal would lead to a balanced budget this fiscal year and would leave huge holes in the budget for the following year, requiring even greater tax increases or spending cuts.

Although the Legislature held three days of public hearings at the beginning of the special session, the alternative plans, including proposals to repair the income tax, received little attention.

Republicans and conservative Democrats reportedly patched together a compromise on Friday. But lawmakers are unlikely to have a chance to understand what they would be voting on. Understanding requires hearings on the package, which has been kept under wraps.

Yet leaders have scheduled a vote in the House today on gutting the budget and imposing the new taxing and spending provisions. What would legislators be voting on? Something with the ink barely dry. Something they would not have had time to digest. Something that they would foist on the state without benefit of public hearing.

Would the alternative budget's revenue projections hold up? Are its proposed spending cuts realistic or even understandable? Does

it pretend to be balanced? Would it guarantee an imbalanced budget for next year?

Or is this a compromise slapped together as an afterthought by people interested only in the political gain they see in pretending they have solutions? Messing around until the midnight hour and then passing some ill-considered measure that soon would need major surgery would destroy what little is left of legislators' credibility.